Anyone wishing for another big-screen treatment of the life of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is in luck. According to The Hollywood Reporter, plans for a film called "My Friend Dahmer" were announced at Comic-Con.

Dahmer, who was born in West Allis, committed a macabre series of murders here involving dismemberment and cannibalism. He was arrested in 1991 and was killed in prison in 1994.

When he was a teenager, Dahmer's family moved to Bath, Ohio. "My Friend Dahmer" is based on a graphic novel by award-winning illustrator Derf Backderf, who attended high school with him there.

According to promotional materials on Backderf's website: "Backderf tries to make sense of the iconic monster who he shared the same school hallways, cafeterias, libraries and compulsive car rides.

"What emerges is a surprisingly sympathetic portrait of a disturbed young man struggling helplessly against the ghastly urges bubbling up from the deep recesses of his psyche.

"The Dahmer recounted here, universally regarded as an inhuman monster by the rest of the world, is a lonely oddball who, in reality, is all too human.

"A shy kid who is sucked inexorably into madness while the adults in his life fail to notice.

"We all know what Dahmer did but ... Backderf provides, from his unique vantage point, profound (and at times, even strangely comic) insight into how, and more importantly, why Jeffrey Dahmer transformed from a high school nerd into a depraved fiend as notorious as Jack the Ripper. "

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the book is "set in a bizarre world of 1970s suburbia, where the future serial killer is a troubled teenager, slowly descending into darkness as his divorcing parents, high school teachers and peers stand by and do nothing."

Backderf is a winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for his political cartoons.

According to THR, rights to the book were purchased by Ibid Filmworks producers Marc Meyers, who produced a Sept. 11 documentary that aired on MSNBC, and Jody Girgenti, who helped develop "Mad Men" when she worked at AMC.

A 2002 film "Dahmer" starred Oscar nominee Jeffrey Renner, who stars in the upcoming "The Bourne Legacy." And earlier this year, "Jeff," a Dahmer documentary by local filmmaker Chris James Thompson, screened at the South by Southwest Festival.

No casting or release date for "My Friend Dahmer" was announced.

About Duane Dudek

Duane Dudek is a reporter and columnist covering radio and television. He also reviews movies.